To any regular at DeWitt Clinton Park in the Hell’s Kitchen section of Manhattan, he is a familiar sight, holding court from his spot on the park bench — incense burning, pipe in his mouth. At age 66, his body is still taut, his graying hair and beard full and kept long. He has that recognizable look of the homeless — bags of belongings, stored food, slept-in clothes — but not the air of the deeply disturbed or desperate.
Photo: Damon Winter/The New York Times
This is the story of Matthew Kenneth Eckstine, who by chance drifted into a conversation with a reporter one recent evening and soon revealed that he was a stepson of Billy Eckstine, the great jazz singer known for his throbbing vibrato and impeccable style of dress. “I admit I don’t dress like him,” said Matthew, who was wearing soiled khakis and a T-shirt that read, “Save Water, Drink Beer.” He sipped from a 24-ounce can of Budweiser as he watched corporate teams play softball in the park, swallowed up in the surround-sound of cicadas and taxis on 11th Avenue.
With gentle encouragement, he took up the narrative of his life: how he had kept company with celebrities and crack addicts; how he had grown up among entertainment and sports stars in Harlem, played basketball at a Southern California college and rode the party scene of the 1960s right through to the 1980s in downtown Manhattan.
While his parents and siblings forged prosperous careers in show business — including his sister, the singer Gina Eckstine, and his brothers, Guy and Ed Eckstine, both prominent music producers — Matthew Eckstine has never had his own home.
“He has lived off the grid virtually his entire adult life,” said Ed Eckstine, a former president of Mercury Records who has worked with artists like Michael Jackson and George Benson. “He has been around and seen a lot of things and befriended a lot of people. This is the path he chose: to live outside boundaries and not go to work, to have his own independence.”
Complete on >> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/14/nyregion/14eckstine.html?_r=2&partner=TOPIXNEWS&ei=5099
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